Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified briefly Friday on the federal monetary conspiracy trial surrounding buzz-to-bust startup Ozy Media, countering founder Carlos Watson’s alleged claims that the search big as soon as sought to purchase Ozy.
Google did contemplate hiring Watson for a high-level information govt job in 2021 and placing $25 million into Ozy in one thing of a tradeoff for luring him away, Pichai instructed jurors.
“Mr. Watson was a critical part of Ozy Media, and we were considering making an investment in the company to make the transition easier,” he defined.
However “did you ever offer to purchase Ozy Media for $600 million?” prosecutor Dylan Stern requested.
“No,” replied Pichai, who heads Google and mum or dad Alphabet Inc.
He stated he had been launched to Watson at a convention after which in a video interview for a attainable Google job interacting with information retailers. Neither the rent nor the $25 million funding in the end occurred.
In response to prosecutors, Watson later instructed one other potential investor that Pichai himself had prolonged a nine-figure provide to purchase Ozy. The Mountain View, California-based firm produced TV packages, podcasts and a music-and-ideas competition earlier than falling aside in fall 2021 amid questions on whether or not it had flagrantly misrepresented its viewers attain, offers, and funds.
Ozy Media lawyer Shannon Frison stated in an emailed assertion Friday that it’s “unequivocally untrue” that Watson instructed anybody that Google had made a $600 million provide.
“He never had such a conversation with Google and never told any person that he did,” Frison stated.
Watson and Ozy Media have pleaded not responsible to fees together with conspiracy to commit fraud. He has stated that he constructed a strong and actual firm, didn’t con anybody, and is being singled out for prosecution when he made, at most, entrepreneurial “mistakes.”
Protection attorneys have blamed any misrepresentations on Ozy co-founder Samir Rao, saying he’s falsely implicating Watson in hopes of avoiding jail himself. Rao pleaded responsible to identification theft and conspiring to commit fraud, and he’s awaiting sentencing.
He testified earlier within the trial that his “moral compass” bought scrambled by ambition, desperation to maintain the corporate going and “Carlos’ deep belief that failure was not an option and we had to do whatever it took.”
Amongst different deceit, Rao infamously posed as a YouTube govt — even utilizing a telephone app to disguise his voice — with the intention to champion Ozy to Goldman Sachs funding bankers on a February 2021 name.
“It was one of the most disturbing calls that I have ever been on in my career,” Goldman govt Hillel Moerman testified Friday, calling the episode “a surreal experience.”
Rao testified that he did the telephone trick to again up a false declare that YouTube was paying for Watson’s eponymous discuss present. Rao stated Watson was with him in the course of the name, texting him about what to say: “I am a big fan of Carlos, Samir and the show,” learn one textual content that was proven to jurors.
Protection lawyer Ronald Sullivan Jr. has stated Watson got here into the room in the course of the name, realized “a live train wreck” was unfolding and tried to get Rao to finish the dialog.
On the opposite finish, Moerman thought the putative YouTube exec’s voice appeared clearly “off,” amongst different clues that made the Goldman bankers suspicious, he recalled Friday.
One in all his colleagues quickly referred to as the precise govt at YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet. The ruse unraveled. So did the potential for a Goldman funding.
“We had been lied to,” Moerman defined to the Brooklyn federal courtroom jury.
Goldman Sachs did maintain promoting with Ozy after the episode, in accordance with Rao’s testimony.
Watson instructed Goldman and Ozy’s board that Rao had suffered a psychological well being disaster. Rao instructed jurors he was taking antidepressants on the time however wasn’t having a psychiatric break.
